ABSTRACT
Obesity is associated with an increase in the risk of a number of age-related chronic diseases, including chronic kidney disease (CKD), which often progresses to renal failure (Bray et al. 1998; Anon 2000; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2001). In the United States, obesity is now the second leading cause of preventable disease and death, surpassed only by smoking. These two common conditions are clearly connected by more than coincidence, as both the association and the pathogenic mechanisms involved are well established (Kambham et al. 2001; Fox et al. 2004). The concurrent rise in CKD with the dramatic rise in obesity has led to an increased prevalence of renal failure, doubling in the past decade (Hsu et al. 2006). The prevalence of CKD has held steady since the early 2000s, a reversal of the previous increasing trend from the 1990s, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chronic Kidney Disease Surveillance Team (Murphy et al. 2016).
